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Tolstoy saddles up to retrace epic ride across steppe

THE adventurer and author Alexandra Tolstoy is to recreate one of the great equine endurance feats by attempting a 2,200-mile journey on horseback from Turkmenistan to Moscow.

She will trace a route taken in 1935 by Turkmen riders who proved that the best choice of cavalry mount for the Red Army was the akhal-teke, a breed that had been used by local nomads for generations.

In 1999 Tolstoy, a descendant of the novelist Leo Tolstoy, became one of the first travellers in centuries to ride the Silk Road linking Xian in China with the eastern Mediterranean. She fell in love with Shamil, a Tartar horseman, and wrote a book about her adventures.

She has also ridden across Mongolia and Siberia with Shamil, whom she married in London last year, but believes that her next journey will be the most difficult and dangerous.